Charlie Parker

Chronology of Coverage

Oct. 11, 2013

Dwight Garner reviews book Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch. MORE

Mar. 31, 2011

Daniel M Gold reviews New Federal Theater production of Bill Harris play Cool Blues, based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker, directed by Ed Smith and starring Marcus Naylor and Terria Joseph, at the Abrons Art Center. MORE

It's an unlikely story, but the most stunning jazz discovery in a decade -- the Rosetta Stone of bebop -- was unearthed at an Elks Lodge in Chelmsford, Mass. The trove consisted of seven 12-inch acetate discs, on which was recorded a 40-minute concert by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker at Town Hall in New York on June 22, 1945.

The hayloft on the flat, rich Georgia field here was swept away in 1987, transformed like so much of the state into a manufacturing plant with flagpoles, loading docks and endless blank walls. But when Paul W. Reid III takes a fragile acetate disc and puts it on a specially made turntable, a small room in the factory becomes the Harry Smith Studios across from Carnegie Hall on a September day in 1948. This was the actual disc that was used to record Charlie Parker that particular day, before the use of magnetic recording tape. Parker, at the height of his abilities, was playing ''Parker's Mood'' with Miles Davis, John Lewis, Curly Russell and Max Roach, and the fidelity of the ancient recording medium is astonishing.

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August 22, 2014, Friday

Alexandra Avakian recalls her father, Aram, whose passions — photography and jazz — came together when he photographed the now-historic recording sessions of Duke Ellington, Chet Baker, Miles Davis and others.

December 8, 2013, Sunday

Stanley Crouch’s extended riff on Charlie Parker is less a standard biography and more an exploration of aesthetics and ideas, about America in the first half of the 20th century and black intellect and feeling.